


Salad

by Pikagirl541



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, pet death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21907531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pikagirl541/pseuds/Pikagirl541
Summary: Seto learned to cope with grief at a young age, but a particularly painful memory still haunts him.
Kudos: 5





	Salad

He hated these dinners. It wasn't the cookie-cutter businessmen or the high expectations that bothered him; he was used to all that. It was the damn salad.

Every meal had a salad. He felt a knot in his stomach seeing it in front of him. He felt sick eating it.

He'd been scolded after the first one of these dinners, when he'd excused himself as politely as a child could and threw up in the bathroom.

"I didn't want to make a scene, but salad makes me sick. I think it's the lettuce."

To Gozaburo’s credit, from then on he had made sure Seto wasn't given lettuce. But salad made with spinach wasn't any better.

It wasn't any of the ingredients. It was the image; one that brought back a painful memory.

He was barely five. His mom was gone, and her beloved pet iguana wasn't eating.

"I know you miss mom, Lizzy. I miss her too. But she's not coming back." He never blamed his brother. He only blamed the doctor who botched the C-section. "You're gonna have to let me or daddy feed you now."

Lizzy didn't respond.

He couldn't remember exactly what iguanas ate, but he knew they liked 'bunny food'. He raided the fridge for anything green and made a little salad.

Lizzy ate it after a bit of coaxing. He'd gone to bed feeling proud of himself... and woken up to find his pet -his mom's pet since her teen years- dead.

"Poor girl." His dad had tried to comfort him. "Must have died of a broken heart."

_I killed her._

"That happens sometimes. You can miss someone so much that your heart really breaks, and you just can't keep going anymore."

_It was the salad._

Looking back, it may not have been the salad. Maybe his dad was right; maybe she really was too depressed after losing the woman who had hatched and cared for her.

But salad would always remind him of that night.


End file.
